there are two differences. the first one you noted as the greater disitribution breadth. i'm afraid that you can't overlook this factor. if i put an episode of sex and the city on my ftp server behind my "little" dsl line at home, i could probably be able to distribute 3-4 copies an hour. to strangers. anywhere in the world. take the fact that they then get it and can do the same thing, you have an exponential growth pattern. without degredation of quality.
I see your point but, the critical question, to me at least, is whether or not this can be argued to be a significant enough difference to merit a difference in legal definition. Let me try to explain that.
Sure, there's a big difference between the shows on your FTP and copying shows to tape for friends. The distribution capability alone, on average, shows this to be a big difference.
However, one could argue, and lawyers probably will, that there's no difference here, theoretically, which is what counts. In theory, someone with free time, and money to buy more tapes could make many multiple copies of a TV show and then go out on the street (or to the office) and give them away. It is a fine line, to be sure, but is it 100% different in procedure from what you're suggesting with FTP? Probably not.
Besides, I imagine one of the clinching arguments might be (for broadcast, at least), that the broadcast is free for the viewer anyway....
The lawyers have to prove that this is markedly different from trading video-taped shows. Aside from 1 factor (the greater distribution breadth), I don't see how it is.
So the question they've got to answer is: why is digital media different from analog (i.e. tape) media?
I don't know about everyone else, but I can't think when the clothes I'm wearing are uncomfortable. If I am more productive when I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt then management will allow it. No one fucking sees me anyway, unless I go to the cafeteria and even then they probably think I'm on the janitorial staff. Who cares??
The United States went from being just another economic entity around about 1900 to being an economic superpower by, let's say, 1960. And then grew even further. A lot of this growth was facilitated by the hard work of people who had to go to work, day in and day out, in suits. Even in summer. Without Air Conditioning.
Now, no one's asking you to show up wearing a starched shirt and pressed pants, but would holding the minimum to clean jeans and non-t-shirts be too much to ask?
And before you ask, I'm a Solaris admin, ok?
And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not.
I don't think RMS uses MS Word. I have files originally saved in MS Word 5.1 Version for Macintosh that Word2000 still opens just fine.
Someone I know was unable to apply for a job because resumes had to be Word files.
You mean they couldn't find a friend with MS Office & a connection to the Internet to send that file? How about just doing it at an Internet Cafe? Or a public library? Sorry, I find this extremely hard to believe.
And those "suggested replies" have the kind of condescending, arrogant tone that isn't likely to get you anywhere with most people. But, as someone else said elsewhere, RMS probably mostly sends these to reporters who will interview him anyway and who he can afford to piss off.
Wait a second.... How is my mother going to get a Macro Virus when I send her the letter I wrote in MS Word, printed out, put in an envelope and mailed to her?
Nice article - and I'll look forward to the next installment.
Here's a question, though - Do we still live in an age where we can postulate these types of ideas and questions, or do we demand hard-core applications to come directly from speculative science?
I've wondered about that for a number of years now.
My thoughts on Adams
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have bought and read each of Adams' books as they have come out, starting with The Dilbert Principle. I enjoyed TDP immensely, but have grown more and more disillusioned with each book.
Whilst his jokes about "padding his material" were funny in the first book, the humor has faded as the joke is repeated in later books. Possibly because I've also had the realization that this joke is not the only thing being repeated. To be honest, the whole "philosophy" is simply repeated.
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that Scott Adams is simply a lucky guy who stumbled upon the idea that depicting the inanities everpresent in Corporate America in a comic strip would touch a certain angst-ridden nerve in a fair amount of the population and be fairly popular.
And it was. And so he set about exploiting it to make more money.
All of which is well and good. But it doesn't make him an intelligent person or some whose theories should be given extra credence because of who he is. He's just a guy with the right idea at the right time.
Half-Life had a major update last Wednesday, adding voice support and other changes, and it's most popular modification, Counter-Strike, which is played by more people on-line than, er, Quake III, had a major upgrade to 1.3.
3. I am continually annoyed, scared and depressed by the comments on designing up front. For $40m projects doing air traffic control then sure, you want some pretty sweet documentation. But for 98% of business systems you need enough to get to your first deliverable. And that's not much. The design needs to accommodate the immediate requirements, and if you follow design patterns and don't actually close off expansion capability, then you can adapt to the changes needed for further deliverables. XP isn't about diving on in and coding, it's about thinking how to deliver what is needed. And if future capabilities aren't needed now, just don't spend time writing them - it's quick, cheap and easy to change code.
Of everything else here, this is my biggest worry. It's all well and good to say you won't "close off expansion" for further development. But many, many times, you have no choice.
For instance, what you're going to run into is a situation whereby design decisions you made during round 1 of development hamstring possibilities for developing rounds 3 or 4.
Good design can help to take some of this into account. If you know that the customer is going to want Y in 6 months, then you'll develop to be compatible with Y, as opposed to doing something different that will be faster to develop now but harder to integrate later.
Overall XP does seem to have some good points, but so does the general writing on making programmers' lives easier in general. I'm afraid I view XP as merely a way of getting rid of Configuration Management.
Has anyone had success communicating with CVS Gnomes? If so, how did you do it? They seem to be afraid of me:(
I've found that a little hacking of the commitinfo file and a large hammer keep the little fu^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H developers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H CVS Gnomes in line.
I have reservations about any book that claims to be able to define a "successful" web community, let alone how to duplicate that success. The most successful web communities seem to be happy accidents (see userfriendly and this esteemed site)
I agree 100%. Look as well at www.counter-strike.net, www.ars-technica.com, etc.... "Happy Accidents" sums it up very well.
The best advice seems to be to offer information on something you enjoy and believe in, and people will eventually find it and start to contribute (thanks Google!). If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.
This book just appears to be another in a long line of books (remember "Creating Killer Websites"), people (Jakob Neilsen), and organizations (any "internet marketing" group) who continue to wilfully misunderstand what the 'net is about.
Here's a hint - despite all the pretty pictures, it's still about content. Even the porn sites understand this.
I have a relative who ditched Andersen Consulting (amazing company) for a dotcom. He was offered a bit less money, but "stock options", and doesn't have to travel, which is better for him now that he's married.
The thing is that at Andersen, they made a policy that if you ditch for a dotcom, you're not allowed back when the dotcom fails! Companies like them knew that there'd be problems such as now, can't say they didn't warn ya...
That's simply not true. I live and work in Chicago (AC's worldwide headquarters). My girlfriend (who also is in Chicago) left AC in the beginning of the year for a dot-com (the same one I'm still at, but that's another story). After 3 months she said "**** this" and went back to AC. They welcomed her back with open arms and also made it known that they're looking for people with "startup" experience because of the experience former dot-commers can bring to them (i.e. knowing what not to do).
Now while it's true the dot-com she was at hasn't failed yet, I definitely haven't heard of this "policy" from AC, in fact, quite the opposite.
However, a different version was passed in the Senate, which would mean that it has to get sent back (House & Senate must pass identical versions of the bill) to the House
It seems to me that Congress could use some version control. CVS anyone?
The only visible evidence of Brown's bandwidth fixation is the plethora of color-coded, four-prong jacks -- "network jacks" is a better description -- scattered throughout the house. And there are more jacks for additional DSL access. With this setup, both Brown and Haviland can telecommute simultaneously from their home offices. Hose-like conduits are in place to lace fiber optics -- providing more bandwidth -- through the walls. "We built with expansion in mind," Brown says.
Uh, has he not heard of VPNs & Switches? Perhaps fiber & Gigabit Ethernet?
My fiance & I can both work from home and be into our companies' LANs at the same time with only the following:
$49.99 Earthlink DSL Connection (1.6Mb)
$250.00 WebRamp Firewall/hub
$250.00 Apple Airport
2 $200 or so Lucent WaveLAN cards.
Sure, we're not getting 100Mb, but it's not like we're running IBeam out of our house....
The author in this article talks about "Japanese perfection" and harps on a few of India's software houses having less then.05 defects per 1000 lines of code.
I have personal experience proving that the latter example is utterly false. Work we've contracted out to India has returned in an appalling state, and, in many cases, was rendered totally useless. It's my opinion that the writer of the original article is a bit too imbued with the "Asians do a thorough job" myth when the truth is really "Asians (in fact any non-Americans or non-Europeans) do a cheaper job" is more the truth.
PHBs & industry "consultants" know that the latter is true and so perpetuate the myth of the former to tone down the risks presented by the latter. Risks that make "proposals" look less watertight.
I'm a release engineer for a company that makes, essentially, software. It's my job to make sure that all the code makes it to the right environment on time, that I know which version is being worked on where, and what's in every "release" we do. Based on my experience, here's how I see it:
A new product idea is thought up. It's scoped out a bit and then the programmers start programming.
The programmers drift a bit from each other and only through the miracles of CVS does the code not get totally out of whack.
Milestones change, programmers come and go, and you get a whole bunch of contractors in.
Eventually someone (usually a PHB or Marketing) decides that some product should be seen, regardless of the most recent "goal dates".
Yours truly "cuts" a release and sends it to QA.
QA finds 4 billion bugs.
Programmers do some bug-fixing and some hemming-and-hawing happens between IT & Marketing (Product Managers).
Marketing decides they want to see another release, regardless of how many bugs it has.
Yours truly "cuts" another release and sends it to QA.
QA finds somewhat less bugs, and most of the "fatal" ones are gone.
Marketing decides the bugs aren't fatal enough to ship and since they're getting so much pressure from Sales to ship some product (or at least get stuff to demo), the product ships.
Most admins practice the "first time's a warning, second time we go to the switch and remove his connection" method of dealing with people ****ing with their systems. Take the hint and play with your own server.
I don't really mean to be defending AT&T here ($DIETY knows I hate AT&T Digital Cable), but yet again my personal experience with @Home was very good.
Their mail, DNS etc are run off an MS box in another state and never work.
This wasn't the case for me. All the services I needed appeared to be located on boxes in Illinois and were fast & reliable.
Their "software" is extreemly invasive and intolerable.
The dude who installed my service asked me if I wanted it installed or if I just wanted the IP, Gateway, DNS, Proxy & mail server details to do it myself. So I didn't get the software installed. Having said that, I doubt it's more invasive than, say, AOL.
Their sevice is also piss poor and has all the bad attitude of the +5 blame the user posts above.
Again, my experience, and perhaps this is only in the Chicago area, was very good.
The only solution to a problem like this is to demand an end to local cable monopolies. Shutting down critics is just more fuel for the fire.
Well I'll agree with demanding an end to local cable monopolies. Ameritech's stranglehold in this area is case enough. However, to return to the original point, in this case the guy was publishing internal & private documents. I don't see AT&T as being in the wrong for wanting to not have their private corporate documents made public.
Not to mention, of course, as lots of people have pointed out, that that view of technical support is probably correct anyway.
I live in a suburb of Chicago that has yet to be wired for @Home.. What is the competition for @Home in Chicagoland, because I'd love to know? Thanks!
21st Century is one and MediaOne is another. I know 21st century is trying to expand out of the city as fast as possible, to keep up with AT&T, and I've heard a lot of good things about them technically as well as customer service-wise.
Slashdot Mirror
there are two differences. the first one you noted as the greater disitribution breadth. i'm afraid that you can't overlook this factor. if i put an episode of sex and the city on my ftp server behind my "little" dsl line at home, i could probably be able to distribute 3-4 copies an hour. to strangers. anywhere in the world. take the fact that they then get it and can do the same thing, you have an exponential growth pattern. without degredation of quality.
I see your point but, the critical question, to me at least, is whether or not this can be argued to be a significant enough difference to merit a difference in legal definition. Let me try to explain that.
Sure, there's a big difference between the shows on your FTP and copying shows to tape for friends. The distribution capability alone, on average, shows this to be a big difference.
However, one could argue, and lawyers probably will, that there's no difference here, theoretically, which is what counts. In theory, someone with free time, and money to buy more tapes could make many multiple copies of a TV show and then go out on the street (or to the office) and give them away. It is a fine line, to be sure, but is it 100% different in procedure from what you're suggesting with FTP? Probably not.
Besides, I imagine one of the clinching arguments might be (for broadcast, at least), that the broadcast is free for the viewer anyway....
The lawyers have to prove that this is markedly different from trading video-taped shows. Aside from 1 factor (the greater distribution breadth), I don't see how it is.
So the question they've got to answer is: why is digital media different from analog (i.e. tape) media?
Like I said, should be interesting....
I agree with most of the above except this:
I don't know about everyone else, but I can't think when the clothes I'm wearing are uncomfortable. If I am more productive when I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt then management will allow it. No one fucking sees me anyway, unless I go to the cafeteria and even then they probably think I'm on the janitorial staff. Who cares??
The United States went from being just another economic entity around about 1900 to being an economic superpower by, let's say, 1960. And then grew even further. A lot of this growth was facilitated by the hard work of people who had to go to work, day in and day out, in suits. Even in summer. Without Air Conditioning. Now, no one's asking you to show up wearing a starched shirt and pressed pants, but would holding the minimum to clean jeans and non-t-shirts be too much to ask? And before you ask, I'm a Solaris admin, ok?
And because Microsoft changes the Word file format with each release, its users are locked into a system that compels them to buy each upgrade whether they want a change or not.
I don't think RMS uses MS Word. I have files originally saved in MS Word 5.1 Version for Macintosh that Word2000 still opens just fine.
Someone I know was unable to apply for a job because resumes had to be Word files.
You mean they couldn't find a friend with MS Office & a connection to the Internet to send that file? How about just doing it at an Internet Cafe? Or a public library? Sorry, I find this extremely hard to believe.
And those "suggested replies" have the kind of condescending, arrogant tone that isn't likely to get you anywhere with most people. But, as someone else said elsewhere, RMS probably mostly sends these to reporters who will interview him anyway and who he can afford to piss off.
Good for him.
Wait a second.... How is my mother going to get a Macro Virus when I send her the letter I wrote in MS Word, printed out, put in an envelope and mailed to her?
Nice article - and I'll look forward to the next installment.
Here's a question, though - Do we still live in an age where we can postulate these types of ideas and questions, or do we demand hard-core applications to come directly from speculative science?
I've wondered about that for a number of years now.
I have bought and read each of Adams' books as they have come out, starting with The Dilbert Principle. I enjoyed TDP immensely, but have grown more and more disillusioned with each book.
Whilst his jokes about "padding his material" were funny in the first book, the humor has faded as the joke is repeated in later books. Possibly because I've also had the realization that this joke is not the only thing being repeated. To be honest, the whole "philosophy" is simply repeated.
After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that Scott Adams is simply a lucky guy who stumbled upon the idea that depicting the inanities everpresent in Corporate America in a comic strip would touch a certain angst-ridden nerve in a fair amount of the population and be fairly popular.
And it was. And so he set about exploiting it to make more money.
All of which is well and good. But it doesn't make him an intelligent person or some whose theories should be given extra credence because of who he is. He's just a guy with the right idea at the right time.
Let's not turn him into Feynman or Socrates, OK?
High School is for knowledge.
College is for thinking.
Graduate School or on-the-job training is for specializing.
And the number of spelling errors in the original post & replies boggles the mind.
Half-Life had a major update last Wednesday, adding voice support and other changes, and it's most popular modification, Counter-Strike, which is played by more people on-line than, er, Quake III, had a major upgrade to 1.3.
But did we hear about it on slashdot?
This is also quite useful: http://arstechnica.com/tweak/win2k/security/begin- 1.html
3. I am continually annoyed, scared and depressed by the comments on designing up front. For $40m projects doing air traffic control then sure, you want some pretty sweet documentation. But for 98% of business systems you need enough to get to your first deliverable. And that's not much. The design needs to accommodate the immediate requirements, and if you follow design patterns and don't actually close off expansion capability, then you can adapt to the changes needed for further deliverables. XP isn't about diving on in and coding, it's about thinking how to deliver what is needed. And if future capabilities aren't needed now, just don't spend time writing them - it's quick, cheap and easy to change code.
Of everything else here, this is my biggest worry. It's all well and good to say you won't "close off expansion" for further development. But many, many times, you have no choice.
For instance, what you're going to run into is a situation whereby design decisions you made during round 1 of development hamstring possibilities for developing rounds 3 or 4.
Good design can help to take some of this into account. If you know that the customer is going to want Y in 6 months, then you'll develop to be compatible with Y, as opposed to doing something different that will be faster to develop now but harder to integrate later.
Overall XP does seem to have some good points, but so does the general writing on making programmers' lives easier in general. I'm afraid I view XP as merely a way of getting rid of Configuration Management.
we turned our management process into a role-playing game, another revolutionary idea that we were very proud of.
Actually, I don't think this is such a bad idea.... I mean, compare it to some "real" management techniques....
Has anyone had success communicating with CVS Gnomes? If so, how did you do it? They seem to be afraid of me :(
I've found that a little hacking of the commitinfo file and a large hammer keep the little fu^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H developers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H CVS Gnomes in line.
Quote from /. contributor: Very impressive
Sorry, that should be: "Most impressive, Young mold-maker."
I have reservations about any book that claims to be able to define a "successful" web community, let alone how to duplicate that success. The most successful web communities seem to be happy accidents (see userfriendly and this esteemed site)
I agree 100%. Look as well at www.counter-strike.net, www.ars-technica.com, etc.... "Happy Accidents" sums it up very well.
The best advice seems to be to offer information on something you enjoy and believe in, and people will eventually find it and start to contribute (thanks Google!). If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.
This book just appears to be another in a long line of books (remember "Creating Killer Websites"), people (Jakob Neilsen), and organizations (any "internet marketing" group) who continue to wilfully misunderstand what the 'net is about.
Here's a hint - despite all the pretty pictures, it's still about content. Even the porn sites understand this.
I have a relative who ditched Andersen Consulting (amazing company) for a dotcom. He was offered a bit less money, but "stock options", and doesn't have to travel, which is better for him now that he's married.
The thing is that at Andersen, they made a policy that if you ditch for a dotcom, you're not allowed back when the dotcom fails! Companies like them knew that there'd be problems such as now, can't say they didn't warn ya...
That's simply not true. I live and work in Chicago (AC's worldwide headquarters). My girlfriend (who also is in Chicago) left AC in the beginning of the year for a dot-com (the same one I'm still at, but that's another story). After 3 months she said "**** this" and went back to AC. They welcomed her back with open arms and also made it known that they're looking for people with "startup" experience because of the experience former dot-commers can bring to them (i.e. knowing what not to do).
Now while it's true the dot-com she was at hasn't failed yet, I definitely haven't heard of this "policy" from AC, in fact, quite the opposite.
However, a different version was passed in the Senate, which would mean that it has to get sent back (House & Senate must pass identical versions of the bill) to the House
It seems to me that Congress could use some version control. CVS anyone?
Hey we've got the same thing, but we went the even cheaper route!
Actually, work paid for everything but the DSL connection (I'm just "testing" it, you see), but still, that's pretty impressive....
Uh, has he not heard of VPNs & Switches? Perhaps fiber & Gigabit Ethernet?
My fiance & I can both work from home and be into our companies' LANs at the same time with only the following:
Sure, we're not getting 100Mb, but it's not like we're running IBeam out of our house....
The author in this article talks about "Japanese perfection" and harps on a few of India's software houses having less then .05 defects per 1000 lines of code.
I have personal experience proving that the latter example is utterly false. Work we've contracted out to India has returned in an appalling state, and, in many cases, was rendered totally useless. It's my opinion that the writer of the original article is a bit too imbued with the "Asians do a thorough job" myth when the truth is really "Asians (in fact any non-Americans or non-Europeans) do a cheaper job" is more the truth.
PHBs & industry "consultants" know that the latter is true and so perpetuate the myth of the former to tone down the risks presented by the latter. Risks that make "proposals" look less watertight.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
...make sure you're playing Counter-Strike as a Counter-Terrorist... and winning."
You've never been an admin, have you?
Most admins practice the "first time's a warning, second time we go to the switch and remove his connection" method of dealing with people ****ing with their systems. Take the hint and play with your own server.
I don't really mean to be defending AT&T here ($DIETY knows I hate AT&T Digital Cable), but yet again my personal experience with @Home was very good.
Their mail, DNS etc are run off an MS box in another state and never work.
This wasn't the case for me. All the services I needed appeared to be located on boxes in Illinois and were fast & reliable.
Their "software" is extreemly invasive and intolerable.
The dude who installed my service asked me if I wanted it installed or if I just wanted the IP, Gateway, DNS, Proxy & mail server details to do it myself. So I didn't get the software installed. Having said that, I doubt it's more invasive than, say, AOL.
Their sevice is also piss poor and has all the bad attitude of the +5 blame the user posts above.
Again, my experience, and perhaps this is only in the Chicago area, was very good.
The only solution to a problem like this is to demand an end to local cable monopolies. Shutting down critics is just more fuel for the fire.
Well I'll agree with demanding an end to local cable monopolies. Ameritech's stranglehold in this area is case enough. However, to return to the original point, in this case the guy was publishing internal & private documents. I don't see AT&T as being in the wrong for wanting to not have their private corporate documents made public.
Not to mention, of course, as lots of people have pointed out, that that view of technical support is probably correct anyway.
I live in a suburb of Chicago that has yet to be wired for @Home.. What is the competition for @Home in Chicagoland, because I'd love to know? Thanks!
21st Century is one and MediaOne is another. I know 21st century is trying to expand out of the city as fast as possible, to keep up with AT&T, and I've heard a lot of good things about them technically as well as customer service-wise.